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Erste Group Bank AG was founded in 1819 as the first Austrian savings bank. Around 45,000 employees are serving over 16,2 million clients in 2,800 branches in 7 countries. Erste Group is one of the largest financial services providers in Central and Eastern Europe.

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Around the World in One Day

Review of the Erste Group’s 11th Asset Allocation Summit

Erste Group hosted the 11th Asset Allocation Summit on December 9th, 2013 in seasonally festive Vienna, Austria. Over 120 participants from as far away as Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai, New York and Sao Paulo gathered to exchange their views and investment ideas at the Erste Event Center.

Several panel discussions with leading experts and thinkers addressed questions about European Credit or gave an outlook on macro-economic changes to come. In addition to interesting panel discussions with participants from around the globe, two Keynote presentations engaged the audience attention: Jonas Ridderstråle and Horace “Woody” Brock.

Change is all around us. Also the socio-economic landscape is diversifying: we are free to do whatever we want and can go wherever we want to go. Winners of this freedom movement are women. They study to a much larger extend than men and organizations are well-advised to change their internal processes to attract all these young women and future talents.

Horace “Woody” Brock spoke about the unintended consequences of ultra-easy monetary policy and the fact that a future crisis may be brewing if the Fed does not change its policy. Another hot topic of his speech was the 30-year decline in labor’s share of income deepening the inequality and the hollowing out of the middle class. This decline resulted in a global rise in corporate profits. Reasons for the decline of the share can be found among other things in the drop of bargaining power by labor unions or the rise of China and its aggressively mercantilistic trade policies.

The Asset Allocation Summit provided once more a compelling platform to gain a deeper understanding about the industry, share best practices and connect with new/old friends. The feedback was more than positive and we are looking forward to next year’s summit.